Transformation 62: Soundwave Joins the Get Along Gang.

19/7/2013

No room for Biggles in the main write up this week, so I've shared his latest amazing adventure below.

In more Transformersey news, Jessie stands up for her man to no effect and Soundwave effortlessly steals the entire comic by being cooler than you ever will be.

All in my look at:

Demolition Derby! Part 2.

12 Comments

Tim Roll-Pickering link

19/7/2013 12:25:16 pm

I assume the Care Bears and Get Along Gang books were the same size as the Complete Works - I've never seen the former and even the British Library doesn't seem to have them - which suggests somebody in Marvel UK didn't really know what "Treasury Edition" meant, despite pence copies having been circulated the previous decade. As for the contents, my memory of the Get Along Gang special is that every story was self contained and could be arranged in whatever order, so readers wouldn't spend time in decades to come trying to work out the correct order for it all.

I think it says a lot about the main story that when the Collected Comics came to do Robot Buster and Second Generation they had no problem leaving this one out as though it wouldn't be missed.

Simon Hall

19/7/2013 02:03:30 pm

I never new this story existed between Collected Comics 9 & 10 until i read the Titan Second Generation book. The fit between 'Robot Buster' and 'Second Generation' stories is so good that this seems almost out of place.

Simon Hall

19/7/2013 02:05:50 pm

Sorry for the double post! I just wanted to add that its a shame so little was done with Jessie during the original comic's run. Especially what with their being a few fairly prominent female humans peppered throughout the run.

Stuart

20/7/2013 07:17:14 am

It had never clicked before this was skipped by the Collected Comics. Considering that between Raiders and the time the series had to work around what the main comic had just reprinted the (ultimately done together) Christmas stories were pretty much the only ones not collected in sequence really does sum up Furman's feeling on this one.

I suppose Jessie eventually got a decent showing in her Underbase issue, even if it was largely an excuse to put her in a bikini.

Auntie Slag

21/7/2013 03:24:40 pm

I don't get it. I love Will Simpson's art, and always found it elevated issues no end; from the Snarl and Slag chapters of Dinobot Hunt to In the National Interest and particularly Issue 114. Similarly I find Devastation Derby to be a stellar bit of Transformer artwork and story.

Smokescreen is excellent. There's more than a bit of Roberts-y MTMTE to him (as in he's smart, brash and very like Rodimus. Ironhide is more than tolerable, which is really something as I usually find him a chronic stillbirth of a Transformer. Tracks gets a little bit of Spotlight and Soundwave is absolutely spot on.

I like stories that don't feature Prime or Megatron. Seeing the troops getting up to stuff and making heat-of-the-moment decisions seemed incredibly rare (I know it totally wasn't, there were plenty of instances where this was in fact the case. I just always appreciated such times).

This 2-issue story is one of my favourites, humans are involved and it doesn't bugger up the story. Ok, the scene of buster waking up in a cold sweat looks like Sloth from The Goonies, god knows what time early in the morning Will drew that, but otherwise I love everything else. It all oozes dynamism, the weight of giant robots, and Devastator looks awesome in almost every scene. Going from Robot Buster to this was pretty incredible, and then from this to The Smelting Pool saga was the Transformers comic on top form.

Nick

22/7/2013 04:09:25 am

Stu, only you could quote Madonna in a Transformers comic review. I'm almost ashamed I recognised it but haters be darned, I love old-school Madge. Don't love Simpson, however, his toy-realistic designs always looked really clunky to me and for some reason it irritated me that he didn't stick with that approach for the Movie characters, like Galvatron. Mind you, it also irritated me that the cartoon designers decided to go for a more detailed approach with the new wave of Autobot cars and Seekers e.g. Ramjet, Hoist, Smokescreen. A lot used to irritate me.

Auntie Slag

22/7/2013 02:16:10 pm

More detailed? But the cartoon designers made Smokescreen out to be a short, dumpy version of Bluestreak and Prowl. To top it off he had no neck and pea-shooters for shoulder cannons. How is that more detailed?

And to rub salt in the wounds, they adopted this look for his appeareance in the UK Legacy of Unicron story.

Only Will Simpson made Smokescreen look cool as hell.

Auntie Slag (again)

22/7/2013 02:17:48 pm

Sorry Dalek, could you delete that duplicate post of mine, if possible? The site said there was an error posting and then it went and did it anyway!

snowkatt

24/7/2013 05:42:54 am

that error happens if you check the notify me by email box

Stuart

23/7/2013 12:20:20 am

That seems to be a recurring thing with Weebly, I'll fix it on Friday.

I'd say Smokesceen's character model is more detailed than the 84 bots, but that's only because the original characters were extremely streamlined, he simply has a lot more of the toy on him even if it's not full on Alex Milne levels.

And you make a spirited defense of this story Sir, and a cool alternate viewpoint.

Nick

25/7/2013 02:41:18 am

The new wave of Autobots and Seekers were so much more detailed than the first wave. Ramjet, Dirge and Thrust had all sorts of bells and whistles on their legs compared with their forebears. Smokescreen might've looked stumpy compared with Prowl and Bluestreak but his design was much closer to the toy one. Same goes for Hoist compared with Trailbreaker and Red Alert compared with Sideswipe. It just surprised me watching these characters in the cartoon for the first time because I figured the animators wanted to use a stripped-down design to make life easier for themselves, much like I guess Filmation did with the Masters of the Universe characters - I'm not sure why they added all the extra detail.I'm also still not sure why they went with the whole Conehead thing for the jets - surely the different colours and wing designs would be enough to differentiate them from Starscream and his posse? I thought they looked really dumb when I saw them with the coneheads for the first time in the Cybertron storyline, which is a shame coz that storyline was a cracker IMO.

Alex link

25/7/2013 05:45:51 pm

From what I've gathered from many, many hours browsing the wiki, the first season character models were streamlined to give the characters more 'heroic' proportions. The initial designs were done by a chap called Shōhei Kohara and then further simplified by Floro Dery, who removed most extraneous details such the wheels on Prime's legs. The differences can be seen in this image here: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Deryizedsideswipe.jpg

The second-season models were designed exclusively by Floro Dery and are based more closely on the toy's proportions, presumably to differentiate them further from their mould-mates (otherwise you'd have six near-identical seekers running around and three Datsun-shaped Autobots).

There's more information and images on these pages:

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dhei_Kohara

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Floro_Dery

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Character_model

I've always been fond of toy-based art as, to my child-like mind, it somehow made the Transformers more 'plausible', as if they could really exist because look, there's a scale-model of one on my floor. Mike Collins and the Ladybird books were always great for a bit of this.

Nowadays I'm pretty fond of the Dery designs. I appreciate their economy, and the fact that artists could cram more than two Transformers into a single panel and still have the actions clear and legible. Don't get me wrong, we've got brilliant artists drawing Transformers these days but I find some of the character models far too busy; too spiky and bulky.

Transformation 62: Soundwave Joins the Get Along Gang.

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